Due to increased theft and fraud over telephony and Internet services, users may wish to identify or verify an individual or merchant prior to giving out personal information. These problems exist today in the PSTN and are more exacerbated in HFC based telephony. Existing techniques, such as Caller ID, are insufficient because Caller ID indicates the endpoint not the caller. Furthermore, Caller ID may not be available, may be blocked, and may not be accurate. For example, a telephone subscriber may request virtually any identifier as a “Name” for Caller ID purposes. Therefore, the “Name” may not necessarily indicate the identity of the individual.
It is a frequent experience of many people that they receive unsolicited marketing calls at home. If the phone subscriber is successfully enticed into a purchase, the subscriber is often asked to provide personal information such as a credit card number, social security number, PIN numbers, etc. Frequently the caller's phone system does not provide any Caller ID information related to the marketing call through the network. Thus, Caller ID does not allow the subscriber to validate the identity of the calling party or the company. A fraudulent caller may register under a false “Caller ID” name that seems legitimate and may fool some subscribers even if they check the Caller ID transmitted. A subscriber may use Caller Originated Call Trace, however, Call Originated Call Trace may only be employed after the call is ended, requires police authority to obtain the data, and costs money (i.e., the subscriber obtains a subscription to the service). In addition, Call Originated Call Trace does not provide accurate identification for similar reasons to Caller ID.
Consumers who may peruse the Internet for goods/services, but prefer to call when making a purchase may be susceptible to fraud because the consumer is obtaining the vendor's phone number from the web-site(s). However, the phone number listed on the web-site may not be the actual phone number of the vendor. For example, a hacker may, unbeknownst to a website operator or vendor, place a different number on a web-site and thus allow the hacker to, for at least some period of time, intercept calls intended for the vendor. Similarly, vendors may not necessarily know that the caller is who they represent themselves to be.
It is also a frequent experience of vendors, that a person may call and use another person's stolen or fictitious identity information with the intent to defraud the vendor. In addition, the caller may be the actual owner of the credit card used in the transaction, but then after receiving the merchandise, the caller may deny having placed the order.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system for validating user and/or vendor information.